Stephen Wertheim

Visiting Scholar, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

Stephen Wertheim is an historian of U.S. foreign relations and international order. He specializes in concepts of politics and law from the nineteenth century to the present. His work has explored the rise of U.S. global power, the origins of international organization, the ideas of international public opinion and grand strategy, and the ethics of humanitarian intervention. Wertheim is currently writing a book tentatively entitled “Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy in World War II.” Centering on the 18 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the book shows how American political and intellectual leaders first decided that the United States should become the world’s preeminent political and military power. Wertheim has published scholarly articles in Diplomatic History, Journal of Global History, Journal of Genocide Research, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. His article on the intellectual origins of the League of Nations won the 2012 Fischel-Calhoun Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Wertheim has also written essays and reviews in Dissent, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, War on the Rocks, and The Washington Post. He was previously a permanent Lecturer in History at Birkbeck, University of London; a Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, University of Cambridge; and a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Values and Public Policy at Princeton University. Wertheim received a PhD from Columbia University in 2015. He also holds an MPhil and MA from Columbia University and an AB summa cum laude from Harvard University.